[Sadielover]

Here's a guide I wrote some while back. Some tips worth knowing in there.

*SADIELOVER'S PRO SCANNING TIPS*


DO

...Line the back of the page you're scanning with a thick, dark card or plastic. Most porn magazines have pretty shitty paper quality, being thin and transparent, and the light from the scanner will likely add images from the reverse side to the scan. Putting a dark, non-reflective, opaque layer directly behind the page will ensure no ghosting of the opposite side. The only downside of this is that your scanned image will lose some contrast, but this can be fixed in any paint prog.

...Bump up the contrast anyway. Most scanners provide washed out, low-contrast images. Brighten them up. But don't overdo it. Incrementally add contrast/brightness accordingly until the picture resembles the image scanned. If the whites are obscuring detail, you're going too far. You'll get a knack for it. If you're feeling brave, adjust the RGB values too. It's common for scanners to add a fine layer of red or/and yellow. If you're careful, you can remove these for amazing results. Again, show restraint, or your babe can end up looking like She-Hulk.

...Resize the image. For two reasons. First, the freshly-scanned image will likely be unnecessarily large to keep/browse, and it should be, because you want to capture all that awesome girly detail from the page. Secondly, the unresized image will be full of pixelly grain, which looks bad. Resizing will iron the grain out leaving a natural, photographic quality. For reference, I scan at 180dp with a magazine filter on, then resize to 1000 pixels or nearest hundred vertically or horizontally. I crop individual panels and save them as seperate images, but some folks just scan entire pages and leave them as is, and they look pretty good too. It's your call.

...Paint in gaps and tears/paint over creases. Not all of our pornography has survived the years of vigourous masturbation intact. A lot of mine have missing corners and ungainly folds from sweaty, desperate grips and careless storage. Painting can be also essential for joining halves of a double-page spread, as the print of the magazine will often have a fraction of the image missing in the centre. Painting is hard, but if you're good, well worth it. With a duplicate brush you can use a combination of unspoiled areas and your fertile imagination to recreate nonexistant walls, carpets, tables, props, clothes and even the model herself photorealistically. It's tricky to learn though, and can look distractingly bad if you fuck it up.

...Weight the scanner to flatten the image. You only really need to do this if your pages are crinkly (ahem), but if they are, flattening will make the world of difference.

...Save your image (jpeg, duh) in relatively high quality. No point taking all this great advice to heart if you're gonna file it for posterity as artifactual nothingness.

...Add details in the filename. Kind of hypocritical of me to say so because I often don't do it, but putting details of the magazine scanned (vol no. etc) into the filename can be useful. And a unique scanner handle can be a godsend for finding more of your work, which if you're good, we'll want to.


DON'T

...Add your massive, garish, shitty, l33t MSPaint scanner logo and/or frame. If you're so wretched that you gotta let the world know that you're the guy who scanned the naked chick, then do it tastefully, with a little transparent logo in the corner. Better yet, don't do it at all, put your scanning handle in the filename instead.

...Airbrush. A real man likes skin textures, hair, pimples, freckles, moles, wrinkles, blemishes, stretchmarks, sags, etc. Reality is sexy. By all means paint out any stray dust or fluff or hair that has gotten trapped in your scanner, but leave the model as nature intended. I'll read FHM if I wanna jerk off to a waxwork.

...Alter her makeup. Please. I've actually seen this attempted. I have nightmares still. For the love of god, don't even try.

...Paint out text. The name of the model, photographer, edition date, blurbs, page numbers etc are useful to collectors. Also, few things are as distracting as a GIANT FUCKING BLACK RECTANGLE next to the babe showing her stuff. I know literature scares a lot of pornhounds, but they gotta learn to read sometime.

The effort is well worth it. Some of mine: